Hosam Amara, a key player in a meatpacking-plant scandal, has pleaded guilty to illegally harboring immigrants. / Gannett

by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - A former manager at what was the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the U.S. pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he harbored immigrants illegally for profit.

Hosam Amara fled to Israel following an immigration raid in 2008 on what was the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse. Federal agents arrested 389 workers in what was the largest immigration raid at the time.

Amara was extradited from Israel. He is charged with conspiring to harbor workers who were in the country illegally and conspiring to provide false immigration papers. The 48-year-old former poultry production manager at the Agriprocessors plant faces 25 counts related to harboring and two counts related to document fraud.

Amara was ordered jailed pending a trial scheduled for July 1 after assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Deegan said the government considered him a flight risk.

The raid was widely condemned as inhumane and a travesty of justice. The arrested immigrants were bused to the National Cattle Congress in for hearings in makeshift courtrooms. Most pleaded guilty to identity theft charges, spent five months in prison and were deported. The raid tore apart dozens, if not hundreds, of families.

Prosecutors say Amara knowingly employed immigrants who were not in the country legally but helped keep them off the books by putting them on the payroll of a separate company. They say he allowed employees to obtain and use Social Security identity cards and green cards that he knew were false.

In addition to Amara, the indictment charged vice president Sholom Rubashkin, whose family owned the company, and former plant managers Brent Beebe and Zeev Levi with taking part in the conspiracy.

Prosecutors say that Levi has apparently fled to Israel and remains a fugitive. Beebe reached a plea agreement in 2010 in which he pleaded guilty to a document fraud charge and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.

Rubashkin was convicted in 2009 on separate financial fraud charges and sentenced to 27 years in prison.